My research interests center on control of movement by sensorimotor integration in the mammalian spinal cord. Using predominantly electrophysiological methods applied in vivo, we study neural signaling by spinal motoneurons, somatosensory neurons, and their central synapses. Our primary analyses include electrical properties, synaptic function, and firing behavior of single neurons. We are actively examining how these neurons and synapses respond soon and long after peripheral nerve injury and regeneration. Our recent findings demonstrate that successful regeneration of damaged sensory axons does not prevent complex reorganization of their synaptic connections made within the spinal cord. In separate studies, we are examining novel mechanisms of sensory encoding and their impairment which recently discovered in rodents treated with anti-cancer drugs. Both nerve regeneration and chemotherapy projects are driven by the long-term goal of accurately identifying the neural mechanisms behind movement disorders. We also continue to explore fundamental operations of the normal adult nervous system. Our most recent studies focus on synaptic modulation of motoneuron firing and on interspecies comparisons of spinal circuits.

Hee Cheol Cho is the Urowsky-Sahr Scholar in Pediatric Bioengineering and Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Pediatrics. He received his PhD in Physiology from the University of Toronto in 2003.

Julie Champion is the William R. McLain Endowed Term Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her B.S.E. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan and Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Champion is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and has received awards including American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee Rising Star, NSF BRIGE Award, Georgia Tech Women in Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Georgia Tech BioEngineering Program Outstanding Advisor Award. Professor Champion’s current research focuses on design and self-assembly of functional nanomaterials made from engineered proteins for applications in immunology, cancer, and biocatalysis.

Dr. Nicholas M. Boulis is a neurosurgeon in Atlanta, Georgia and is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including Emory University Hospital Midtown and Grady Memorial Hospital. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and has been in practice for more than 20 years.

Edward Botchwey received a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1993 and both M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in materials science engineering and bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 and 2002 respectively. He was recruited to the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2012 from his previous position at the University of Virginia. His current position is associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Botchwey is former Ph.D. fellow of the National GEM Consortium, a former postdoctoral fellow of the UNCF-Merk Science Initiative, and a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers from the National Institutes of Health. 

Botchwey’s research focuses on the delivery of naturally occurring small molecules and synthetic derivatives for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. He is particularly interested in how transient control of immune response using bioactive lipids can be exploited to control trafficking of stem cells, enhance tissue vascularization, and resolve inflammation. Botchwey serves on the Board of Directors of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and serves as the secretary to the Biomedical Engineering Decade committee.

Botchwey, his wife Nisha Botchwey (also a GT faculty member) and three children reside in east Atlanta in the Lake Claire neighborhood. Botchwey is also an avid cyclist and enjoys reading YA fantasy, behavioral neuroscience and Christian theology books in his personal time.

I am a rehabilitation neuroscientist keenly interested in the brain's capacity for change in response to rehabilitation after injury or in the context of disease. My work incorporates multimodal neuroimaging and neurostimulation approaches to investigate brain structure and function. The overarching aim of this work is to uncover the key neural substrates supporting motor control and motor learning to enable the design of optimal rehabilitation strategies to maximize recovery of function following neurologic injury.

Dr. Pamela Bhatti is Professor and Associate Chair for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech. Her research is dedicated to overcoming sensory loss in human hearing through focused neural stimulation, and novel implantable sensors. Dr. Bhatti also conducts research in cardiac imaging to assess and monitor cardiovascular disease. She received her B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley (1989), her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington (1993), and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2006). In 2013, she earned an M.S. in Clinical Research from Emory University, and co-founded a startup company (Camerad Technologies) based on her research in detecting wrong-patient errors in radiology. Dr. Bhatti is the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, Editor-in-Chief; and, in 2017, received the Georgia Tech Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award.

Paul Benkeser is a professor and senior associate chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. A member of the Georgia Tech faculty since 1985, he was one of the founding faculty of the Coulter Department in 1998 and served as its first associate chair for undergraduate studies.    

His early research interests were in therapeutic and diagnostic applications of ultrasound. After joining the Coulter Department he redirected his energies toward enhancing undergraduate biomedical engineering  education, with particular interests in integrating problem-driven learning and global experiential learning opportunities in the curriculum. His research and education endeavors have been funded by grants from NIH, NSF, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Whitaker Foundation.    

Dr. Benkeser has been active in engineering accreditation activities for ABET since 2002, serving in a number of capacities including program evaluator, EAC Commissioner, and member of its board of delegates. He is a member of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society, and American Society for Engineering Education, and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.    

He received his BS from Purdue University and MS and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in electrical engineering.

Ryanodine receptors (RyRs) are intracellular ion channels that mediate the release of calcium from intracellular stores. RyR1 and RyR2 are the predominate isoforms in skeletal and cardiac muscle, respectively where they play a central role in excitation-contraction coupling. RyRs are the largest known ion channels and are regulated by a multitude of endogenous effectors including ions, small molecules, and accessory proteins. An area of interest is the regulation of these channels by endogenous effectors, especially as it relates to altered contractile function associated with cardiac ischemia, skeletal muscle fatigue and aging. 

Because of their central role in cellular calcium regulation, defects in RyR channels can lead to potentially fatal disorders. Mutations in RyR1 give rise to the pharmacogenetic skeletal muscle disorder, malignant hyperthermia (MH). RyR2 mutations have been identified in catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia. We are interested in determining the molecular mechanisms by which these mutations alter RyR channel function. 

We analyze channel function on multiples levels of organization. Sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicle [3H]ryanodine binding is used to examine large populations of channels. We incorporate channels into artificial lipid bilayers in order to record single channel currents and assess channel kinetics. Calcium release from permeabilized muscle fibers provides a method of examining RyR function in situ. My research has two long-range goals. The first is to understand how intracellular calcium is regulated and how alterations in the regulation effects cell function. The second goal is to understand the RyR regulatory sites that might be exploited for the development of pharmacological compounds to treat disorders of cellular calcium regulation.

Julia Babensee is an Associate Professor in the Walter H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Dr. Babensee is affiliated with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissue. 

Dr. Babensee is a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute. She is also a permanent member of the NIH Bioengineering, Technology and Surgical Sciences study section. She is actively involved in several professional societies with service including SFB Member-at-Large (2008-2009) and Program Chair for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Her research program is in the area of engineering of inflammatory and immune responses focused on understanding host responses to combination products. Her research interests also include: Biomaterial interactions with dendritic cells, tissue engineering for rheumatoid arthritis, and biomaterial-applied immunology.

Babensee received her Ph.D. from University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine.